


God is within him (he will not fall)

by nigoi



Series: in [feeling] with matsukaze tenma [5]
Category: Inazuma Eleven, Inazuma Eleven GO
Genre: Crushes, Go was all a dream in Tenma's head, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigoi/pseuds/nigoi
Summary: Tenma wakes up after a strange dream with his head scrambled.But there's no time to lose in musings! Today is his first day at Zeus High School and he's going to be late!
Relationships: Afuro Terumi | Aphrodi/Matsukaze Tenma, Kino Aki & Matsukaze Tenma
Series: in [feeling] with matsukaze tenma [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1172747
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	God is within him (he will not fall)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [P----](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=P----).



> the title is a quote from the bible: god is within her, she will not fall. 
> 
> enjoy!

Tenma wakes up gasping. 

_What - what happened?_ he thinks, clutching his chest. It’s tight, the same way it is after you finish your favourite book for the first time. He touches his face. It’s wet. _Did… I have a dream?_

Tenma isn’t used to dreaming --- he prefers to leave that to the moments when he’s awake --- let alone so deeply that it leaves his very being stinging. He tries to think about what he dreamed about, but the memories don’t---

_A purple could, raising from his chest. Shiny tears from a dear person. Someone controlling football. A team full of fear. The bravest team ever. A fight. A revolution. A ball with a lightning bolt on it. It falls and hits some wooden plans and its shooter is a leader. Except he’s not. But that doesn’t matter because they win anyway._

_Football returns but it disappears again. His friends disappear with it too and he’s very sad until someone appears again. Time… travel? Time travel. A caravan and a bear and a rabbit and a doctor and someone’s mother. Mental powers. PainpainpiainpainPAINPAINPAINPAIN. They win, save football again._

_A world championship. Lots of new friends! They don’t like football. They learn to love it. Galaxy championship? A train. More new friends! An old one disappears… and he doesn’t notice. And then they fight and it’s painful and it’s amazing and it’s football and they join and and win and save football again again._

There they are.

If Tenma had been sitting, he would have fallen down on his back. As it was, he hasn’t even managed to start to get up before his mind sends him reeling. He’s never been one to spend time in bed staring at the ceiling, but as each of his memories arrives like a punch to his head, he can’t do anything else.

By the time they’ve finished arriving, he’s laying there, limp and without strength. They - were a dream? But they can’t be. They’re too - too real, too _visceral_. His heart is aching, and he knows for sure that that has to have been real.

But at the same time, they can’t be, because Gouenji didn’t save him when he was a child from falling beams, Japan hasn’t won any Football Frontier International, and he hasn’t heard of Raimon or any Endou Mamoru ever. But at the same time, he has, because he’s Tenma’s childhood hero, and that feeling is something you can’t replicate.

Ugh, his head feels as if it’s splitting apart! It’s going to burst! Tenma curls into a ball and lets the wave of pain pass while his memories settle in. And yes, memories, because there’s no way they’re another thing. After all, if time travel exists (it _does_ ), memory travelling between dimensions has to exist too!

Even if he has no idea how it could have happened. The last thing he remembers is partying with all his friends after finally coming back to Earth. He hopes he hasn’t disappeared from there, because it would totally ruin the mood. It’s better that his self has splitted into two equal parts or something like in those science fiction movies Shinsuke likes.

Someone knocks on the door. It’s a soft knock, one he’s heard thousands of times across both universes.

“Tenma!” Aki’s voice, his practically older sister’s voice, his _neighbour_ ’s voice (and wow is that going to be difficult to reconcile!), comes through the door, accompanied by more of that familiar knocking. “Wake up! You’re going to be late to your first day of school!”

Oh, right. School.

“I’m going, Aki-nee!” Tenma calls back, already slipping out of bed and throwing his pajamas pants out of his legs. Satisfied steps fade into the distance.

He’s halfway through getting his other leg into his uniform pants before he realises, _Wait. This isn’t Raimon’s uniform_.

And then,

 _I’m not going to Raimon_.

And then,

_Where am I going?_

And finally:

_Oh, yeah. Zeus._

…

Wait.

_Zeus? Why am I going there?_

A minute of searching through his poor scrambled head reveals that he just liked the uniform. And seeing the black leggins he’s putting on, the white, Greek-like robe sprawled on his floor, he thinks, _yeah! This uniform is cooler than Raimon’s! Even if it pains me to admit it._

But still. Raimon! Is the first day of school too late to change schools? Does he even want to go to Raimon when everything he knows is different? If his Raimon-history-knowing brain is correct, he’s in the same year Endou will win the Football Frontier. 

Because Endou exists. Aki exists, so Endou has to exist, right? Right?

Suddenly, Tenma remembers all the times Aki has told him, blushing, about Endou-kun and his passion about football, and he sighs in relief. He totally exists. Thank God. 

He totally exists and Tenma can’t even go to school with him because his pre-dream self chose schools based on uniforms! Way to go, past self. Way to go.

But still, that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy his life! Or meet him! After all, he’s made lots of good friends from other schools, so he can befriend Endou too, if he wants to! Which he totally wants to. See, Tenma? You’re being silly. 

Full of renewed energy, Tenma jumps into the other leg of the school uniform and begins putting on the upper part. After untangling himself from it (it’s pretty complicated to know how to put it on!), he jumps again to get up from the floor, and spins to take a good look to his room.

He’s seen it a thousand times, but, at the same time, it’s new to him. Still, he has similar tastes through both lives, so the bed is the same colour, the wardrobe is in the same place, his desk is the same model… The only difference between this room and his other one is the lack of football paraphernalia here.

His Inazuma Japan poster is missing from the wall next to his bed, replaced by one full of cute puppies. There are no worn cleats shoes thrown carelessly next to the door, and no sweaty uniform laying creased at the end of the bed. 

There’s no ball with a lightning bolt carefully drawn on it. There’s nothing in that empty spot of his desk.

Face falling, Tenma thinks, _oh, right. I’ve never paid attention to football here_.

He shakes his head. Even if he’s never played, he can start now! Everything will turn out okay, somehow!

Besides, Zeus was the team that played against Raimon in the FF finals, wasn’t it? That means he’s joining a pretty strong team! He’ll have to work to qualify for the main team and play against Endou!

And wow, isn’t that a dream? Playing against Endou is all his childhood fantasies rolled into one. Ah, that means he can’t change schools and go to Raimon! Definitely!

Well, he’s sure he’ll be okay at Zeus. There are nice people everywhere, and football is, too. If he carved his niche in a distraught Raimon, he’ll do the same in a normal Zeus! After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

With that in mind, he opens the door, goes down the stairs, and steps into the communal kitchen.

“Good morning!” he says to everyone there. Namely: Aki, Kazeaki-san, and Tsukimi-san.

“Good morning,” they chorus back to him, but then Aki, fully dressed and completely prim Aku, puts her hands on her hips and frowns disapprovingly at him. “Tenma! We’re already late and you haven’t even eaten your breakfast!”

Tenma raises his hands innocently, even while his heart does somersaults inside his chest. They’re late. It’s his first day at a new school, and they’re late. And he’s making Aki late! He’s such a rude person.

“‘m sorry,” he mutters, as he sweeps one toast from the breakfast table. He’s running on his place with the toast hanging from his mouth, like in those shoujo anime Kariya likes, so his next words come out slurred, “Let’s go!”

Aki grabs him by the shoulders and forcefully makes him sit down on a chair. When he blinks quizzically at her, she says, sighing fondly, “It doesn’t matter we’re late. Eat your toast calmly, else you’ll choke.”

And because nobody can disobey Aki when she’s at his most reasonable, Tenma starts chewing on his toast slowly, even taking it out of his mouth with each bite like a civilised person. When he finally finishes, Kazeaki-san and Tsukimi-san clap him with warm smiles. Aki is also smiling, but hers is more exasperated than anything else. 

“Ready?” she says, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

Tenma gulps the last of his toast and gets up, punching the air. “Yeah!”

He starts jogging towards the door, but once again, is stopped by one of Aki’s hands on his shoulder. When he turns around to look --- again, quizzically --- Aki shoves his backpack on his face. He takes it with a sheepish grin, and Aki shakes her head. She’s amused, though, so that’s the important thing.

They walk to school together, speaking about how they think their years are going to go. Aki is already in second year, the only manager of pre-Gouenji Raimon football club, and worried about its future. Tenma would like to reassure her, but he can’t, because he’s not that sure his dream is going to be true.

Still, even if it doesn’t happen exactly the same, Tenma’s sure that everything will turn out okay somehow, and tells him so. She just laughs, slides the falling strap of her bag to sit more comfortably on her shoulder. “You always say that,” she says.

He pouts playfully. It was her who taught him to say that, in both, er, lives, so she doesn’t have any right to call him out on it! Even if he’s taken the quote and run with it to uncharted territories. “Am I wrong?”

“Well, not usually, but…”

“Then trust me!”

She laughs again, and bops his nose. “Okay, okay! I’ll trust you.”

Tenma nods sagely. “Good.”

“So,” she begins, knocking their shoulders together. That’s her gesture for when she wants to thank someone but doesn’t want to interrupt the conversation to do it. He knocks shoulders back. “Aren’t you worried about beginning middle high? You’re always cheerful and all, but I know you’re a worrywart deep down.”

 _This beginning can’t be worse than the first one_ , Tenma thinks ruefully, mind flashing to that time he was pummeled by a ball, and that _other_ time he was pummeled by a ball the same day. _Yep. Definitely not worse._

“Well,” he says, looking upwards. The sky is clear and bright, perfect for a happy first day at school. “I’m a bit worried about the people there. And the football club.” 

He doesn’t remember anyone who was attending Zeus at this point of time, despite being a diehard fan of Raimon. Hey, don’t blame him! He didn’t actually watch that match, and the only replays he found on Footube were badly-framed, shaky videos recorded from the back seats of the stadium. He couldn’t distinguish the faces of anyone in there, just the beautiful, beautiful uniform. 

...Hm. Maybe he always subconsciously remembered it and that’s why he’s chosen this school.

Aki is blinking at him. “Since when are you interested in football?”

“Since this morning!” Tenma says, laughing awkwardly. Technically, it’s true. In the loosest of senses.

“Oh.” Aki smiles. “Then I wish you luck! Let’s face in the finals!” Her face falls with a sigh. “If we ever come that far, that is…”

Tenma flicks her forehead with a pout. “You told me you’d believe me! Well, that’s not believing me!”

“Alright, alright… I’ll leave the pessimism to Kabeyama.”

“That’s right!”

Zeus high school is _amazing_.

Amazingly big, amazingly pretty, amazingly impressive, amazingly everything.

If he didn’t have his experience in Raimon, Tenma’d say that this was the best school ever. But he has, so he’ll say that this is the second best. That’s almost the best! Good enough for not having even set foot in it.

But seriously. It’s a coliseum! He’s going to study in a coliseum for the next three years and he’s going to meet new friends and remeet old ones and _meet Endou_ and it’s going to be amazing. _He’s_ going to be amazing.

And so, taking a big gulp of air, Tenma steps through the gates.

“Well,” Aki says, and when he cranes his neck to look at her, her eyes are full of fondness. “I’ll leave you here --- I’ll have to run to school or I’ll be late.” She’s already too late for that, but neither of them comments. “Good luck on your first day!”

“You too!” he calls to her retreating back with a smile. Aki is the best, no matter her age. Turning around to face the school again, he claps his cheeks once, twice. “Here we go, Tenma!”

The hallways are empty --- he’s also late, a stark contrast with his first time around --- so Tenma spends fifteen minutes searching for his class. One of the teachers gave him and his classmates a tour yesterday, but yesterday was also like one year ago, because his dream felt like a year. His memories of everything are a bit hazy, and more so one in which he was too excited to pay attention.

Thankfully, one kind concierge points him in the right direction, and his sliding his (hopefully) class’ door open. Everybody’s eyes are immediately drawn to him, but Tenma’s used to that, after many, many, many important matches. He grins at his future friends.

“Good morning,” his new teacher says, blinking slowly. “You must be Matsukaze Tenma.”

“I am!”

She gestures at the empty seat in the back of the class vaguely, and drags her eyes back to a paper that must be the roll call. Oh, so that’s how she knows his name; everybody but him is in their seats. Nice.

Grinning sheepishly, Tenma waddles to his assigned seat and smiles at the classmates that are looking at him --- that is, every one of them. Dressed in that uniform, it’s as if he’s being stared at by a whole olympus of gods. 

He cracks open a book --- after checking what the others have on their desks --- and gets ready to pay attention. He’s already gone through this year once, even if it was in a dream, so it can’t be too difficult. Still, he’ll try his best!

 _Here we go, old-new-fresh-but-not world!_ Tenma thinks, beginning to read the first paragraph. _Living matter is made of a certain kind of chemical elements, named bioelements. They bond together to make biomolecules. There are two types of biomolecules…_

Classes pass swiftly but not too much, the same as any class ever. Tenma has never been a fan of them, but he’s been in a lot, so he’d know.

Anyways, classes end and it’s time to look for the football club. He doesn’t remember where or how the football club was, because old, dumb Tenma wasn’t paying attention in the club part. Before the dream, he’d been thinking that he’d go home soon and help around the manor and do homework and set his studies straight.

Silly him. Now he’ll be going home late and helping around the manor and doing half of his homework and scraping his studies by the skin of his teeth. A tried and true method.

But as long as football is happy, Tenma is happy.

And so, he goes up to the teacher from the last period, a surly but funny in-an-insulting-sort-of-way man, and asks, “Hi! Do you know where the football club is?”

“Football club?” the man says roughly, rubbing his beard. When he grows up, Tenma wants a beard like that. “I don’t think there is a football club in here…”

“ _There’s not_?!” If he has to pull an Endou, at the same time Endou is pulling the first Endou ever, Tenma’ll--- Tenma’ll---

\---cry. Tenma’ll cry and football will be sad because people skills have never been his skills. Yeah, he has a lot of friends, but most of them have been against him at some point (God bless Aoi and Shinsuke), usually at the beginning, so recruiting people doesn’t have the best chances for him.

That doesn’t mean he won’t try, obviously, because this is football and this is Zeus and - wait.

This is Zeus.

Zeus plays in the finals of the Football Frontier against Raimon.

Zeus _has_ to have a football club. 

Or did Zeus’s captain pull an Endou too and nobody noticed? That would be pretty sad, but it could happen, he guesses. If we’re going by statistics, it’s not impossible. Tenma’s played with and against animal spirits, he’s literally been one, so this is definitely not the weirdest thing to ever happen to him. He’d even dreamt he was from ten years in the future, and that dream was probably prophetic!

But still. Zeus not having a football club? That’s strange. Very, very strange…

“Wait.” The man stops rubbing his beard to look at Tenma, bored. “There’s a football club. Yeah, yeah… It’s on the lower floor, right next to the bathrooms. Can’t miss it, unless you’re stupid. And you aren’t stupid, are you, boy?”

Tenma sweatdrops. _That’ll depend on who you ask…_ He doesn’t want to lie to his teacher on the first day, but he also doesn’t know which answer is the lie, so. Laughing awkwardly, he bows in thanks and dashes off without answering. 

He has to stop and ask for direction twice more, because this high school is ultra mega big, way bigger than even Raimon, and Raimon was enormous. He gets forgot the way to the bathroom, and then, it turns out that he ended up in another bathroom and had to ask another teacher again. At this rate, everybody in the school is going to know his name before the end of the day. How embarrassing!

But when finally, finally, he’s before the gates of the club…

He’s a bit. 

How do you say it?

Put off.

Yes, he’s put off.

It’s not that the football club is bad, or even small… In fact, when compared to the original Raimon football club, this is an outright mansion. But an outright mansion when compared to that building is a normal club room in any other standards. And Tenma is so not used to the football club being a normal one. It’s usually recognizable by being the highest, flashiest building in any school, even higher than the classes building itself.

It’s white, classic, and adorned, like everything in the school itself. It’s too small to have an inner field, but it’s close to the outer one, and that one is very taken care of. If it rains, they’ll get wet, but Tenma’s played in far worse conditions, so he doesn’t really care about that. The building is comfortable for a moderately-sized team, and he’s sure it’ll be like an, er (first second third) fourth home in no time. But.

But...

He knew it was different before. Really knew, because he has lived in this time all his life, the ten years later but with the same age dream notwithstanding. But still, he hasn’t really _known_ it until now. 

_Well_ , he thinks a second later, eyeing the building with new eyes. _It’s not like I’ve ever cared about appearances. If Endou can win the Football Frontier with a run-down club, I can do the same with something better! As long as there’s a ball and I have feet, I can play!_

Relieved, Tenma grabs the handle of the door, and pulls it open. 

Again, thirteen sets of eyes stare at him. He stares back, and this time he is a bit cowed, because _these are his new teammates! He has to make a good impression!_ He resists the urge of straightening his uniform (it looks better crumpled, like a real toga) and instead smiles shakily at them.

“Good morning!” he says, dumbly. It’s afternoon, Tenma. Afternoon! Better keep going. “I’m here to join the football club!”

Everybody exchanges glances, but Tenma refuses to be deterred. The situation of this club can’t be worse than his Raimon’s. At least, there’s not big evil organisation controlling football and sucking all the joy from it.

...He hopes. 

Finally, one of them stands up. They have brown hair, a bit shorter than Kariya’s, that falls over their shoulders like a cascade. Their face is hard into the sort of androgynous beauty that Akane is always fangirling about, but that doesn’t make their expression any less kind.

“Good… afternoon.” They noticed. Tenma blushes. “The trials start tomorrow afternoon, so…”

“I’ll come back here tomorrow, got it!” he says in a rush, and then pales when he realises he’s interrupted his senpai. “I’m sorry!”

They blink. “What for?”

“Nevermind!”

Tenma turns around and starts running, but then he collides with a person and tumbles butt-first to the floor.

“Ouch,” he mutters, rubbing his waist --- not his butt, because he’s in front of people and that would be rude. Someone sticks a hand in his range of vision. “Huh?”

He follows the hand up to the wrist elbow shoulder neck---

\---and sees the most beautiful face ever. 

Shiny maroon eyes shine with mirth as its owner smirks down at him. His skin, pale and unblemished, shines with the light that comes through the window. His straight hair flows down his shoulders in a golden cascade, tilting up at the points. Not too many people look flattering when looked from below, but this person---

The still-extended hand moves and, snapping his eyes back to it, Tenma realises he’d been staring. His cheeks redden, but hey, who can blame him? This boy here is the loveliest human being, at least in terms of appearance.

“Are you there?” he says, and oh, his voice. It’s like a choir! Tenma’s heart skips a beat, just like when the audience starts to cheer after Raimon wins a match. It’s the _greatest_ feeling. The boy’s golden hair shifts minutely as he laughs. “Have I broken you?”

“I, uh.” Tenma opens and closes his mouth like a fish. Then, quietly, with his cheeks burning like lava, he adds, “Yes.”

The boy laughs again, fingers wiggling somehow gracefully. He thinks he hears some people laughing behind him, but, as he belatedly takes the boy’s hand, the world gets reduced to just the two of them. 

“So honest,” he murmurs as he helps Tenma stand up. “I’m Terumi Afuro. Charmed to meet you.”

Tenma’s back straightens as if a ramrod had been shoved in. “M-Matsukaze Tenma!”

And, to his endless embarrassment, his body automatically starts shaking their hands exhuberantly up and down. Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down…

 _Oh my god_ , Tenma realises with half a mind (the other half is occupied screaming). _I’m so embarrassing. Oh my god. I am actually_ dead. _Of embarrassment._

Suddenly, his mind catches up to his body and he thrusts his hand away from Terumi’s, who’s blinking bemusedly down at him. Tenma would apologise, but he’s too busy discreetly wiping his hand with the edge of his toga. He was _sweating_. He was holding Terumi’s hand and he was sweating.

He’s going to go dig himself a hole and never go out of it. He’s not going to be able to face this club anymore.

Tenma is about to teleport to the Kogarashi Manor when Terumi - 

\- straights cracks up laughing. Doubles over and everything, with his hair slipping over his shoulder and tenderly brushing his face. His eyes are crinkling, and his whole face lights up, like a cloudy sky being cracked open by godly light.

It’s mesmerizing.

Tenma hasn’t realised that his mouth has fallen open until Terumi’s finger curls under his chin and clicks it closed. Tenma would blush, but his mind is too busy short circuiting to manage secondary bodily functions.

Oh my God, Tenma is in love! He understands Akane a bit more now. 

“Close your mouth, you rude boy,” Terumi says, sounding not at all offended despite the moniker. Ba-dum! Tenma’s heart skips a beat. This is just like the exact moment when he realised Raimon had won the finals of the Holy Road.

He tries to answer, but only a squeak comes out. He thinks there’s smoke flowing out of his ears like a steam train, but again: brain out of service.

Someone pats his back. He doesn’t know who it is, because his eyes are totally fixated on the god that is Terumi, but someone does. 

“I know the feeling,” they say in an exasperated voice, and pat his back again. “We all do.”

Tenma’s dying-like noise says it all. Or, he hopes.

There’s a beat of silence. Then, Terumi brushes a lock of hair behind his ear (that image will be on his dreams forever) and, with a smile still lingering, says, “So, you’ll be here tomorrow, rude boy?”

And Tenma, Tenma gathers all the willpower that allowed him to be the captain of the team that saved space, time and football, and stutters out, “y-yeah! Of. Of course!” And not just because of Terumi (though that is a nice bonus) but because football!

Terumi’s grin is wide, and his teeth are perfect. “Then I’ll see you.”

“Y-yeah. Bye!” 

Tenma takes the dismissal for what it is and scurries away like Matatagi when he’s nervous. He can’t say he’s left his dignity in that room, because he’d never been one to care about those things, but if he were, he totally would say it. Oh my god he was so dweeby! What are they going to think of him now?

Tenma stops running when he’s next to the exit and leans against a wall, trying to calm his breath before returning home. His heart is beating way too fast; that can’t be healthy. 

_There’s no way I can have made a worse impression than the first time around_ , he reminds himself. _Like, literally no way. And Terumi was smiling, so… it didn’t go that bad? I hope. And even if it has, everything will end up turning okay somehow._

Moderately reassured, Tenma unsticks himself from the wall and starts the walk home. The high school is mostly empty, but enough people are present for it to look like a moving painting. Really, everything here is way too pretty.

His mind flashes to Terumi, and Tenma realises with horror that he hadn’t focused on his uniform. When he does, his heart is going to skip a beat so hard that he’s going to die, he just _knows_.

 _But…_ His eyes drift skywards. The sun is setting, dyeing the clouds a beautiful orange hue. _It will be great. My time here will be great._

He just knows it!

**Author's Note:**

> i may continue this...... one day


End file.
